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Interactive Timeline

Timelines are a very important way of depicting the chronological order of events relating to a particular subject, they can help the viewer to understand the order of a set of events, in order to see a progression, recession or relationship between time and events.

I started by looking at other Viking timelines, some of which you can see below:

I then incorporated events from theses timelines along with previously researched events together to form my own timeline. I did find it interesting though that some events where listed with differing dates in different timelines, in particular the dates of monarchs, so I looked at the British monarchy site (which you can find below) to make sure my information was accurate.

I then started to draw maps and to research and illustrate some of the individuals mentioned in my time line, to see these see below:

My timeline shows 21 different events in Viking history, it is my intention for my timeline to depict a number of things about the Vikings and the time period that they occupied in history. I hope to show the large period of time that the Viking age encompasses and the escalation in events within that time. I also would like it to show some of the key people and places involved in Viking history and the large area of the world that the Vikings affected. I have attempted to accomplish my aims by picking particular events that I believe will show the user the relevant information and I have tried to enhance and reinforce the textual information with illustrations and basic animations.

I also intend to add extra information at a later date, in the form of Easter eggs and I don’t mean the chocolate kind, Easter eggs in this case relate the games design principle of adding intentional hidden content that can be found by exploration rather than indication.

I am reasonably happy with my timeline but I did encounter some difficulty when copying my illustrations from Adobe Illustrator to Adobe Flash, for two programmes that are suppose to work well together they struggled and threw up some interesting issues, particularly with stroke widths changing sizes on their own.

I may revisit my timeline before the end of the project with fresh eyes to assess its strengths and weaknesses but for time being it will stay as it is so that I can move forwards.